She cared about her soul.
She would not care about Phoenix. When she was gone, he’d be relieved. He’d never wanted to be leashed to her. She was blind and came from demon witches. Talk about a bad deal in a soul mirror. But she needed him to keep Dee and Kyle safe and to get the witches to help her break the handfast.
She took a shower and got dressed, then made her way into the kitchen, zeroing in on the delicious coffee smell. Normally she drank tea, but this coffee smelled so rich and enticing. She heard the sound of a paper turning at the table—newspaper? Was it Phoenix?
“Ailish, you’re up,” Dee said. “Do you want coffee? Phoenix made it. Some special blend he grinds up.”
That’s why the aroma was so strong, he ground his own beans. “Uh, I’ll get it.” She had it fixed in her head where most things were. She found the coffeemaker, and the cups in the cupboard just above. After getting one down, she felt for the handle of the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Where’s Phoenix?”
“He said there was something he had to deal with and he’ll give you a call when they’re ready for the phone conference.” Dee’s voice was close by in the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” She heard dishes, smelled toast.
“Getting you breakfast, and don’t fuss at me. Just go sit down.”
Ailish sighed and carried her coffee to the long table on the other side of the bar. “You’re bossy for an employee.”
“Yeah, well, I’m putting in for hazard pay.”
And she’d pay it. “You’re lucky I don’t charge you for my healing services.” The chair across the table looked empty. Where was Kyle?
Dee set something in front of her. “Scrambled eggs and toast.” Taking the seat at the end of the table, she added, “Thank you for saving my life. Those men just came out of nowhere, then the shock, the pain, my blood everywhere … that scared the hell out of me. I felt my life slipping away until your magic pulled me back.”
Ailish said, “Don’t thank me. It’s my fault you were attacked. I’m not going to let it happen again.”
Dee reached out and touched her arm. “Eat, Ailish. We’re safe enough here. Phoenix seems very … capable.”
She picked up her toast and took a bite. Toast was easier to manage than scrambled eggs.
“And in case you were wondering,” Dee added, “he looks as dangerous as you thought. Very sexy.”
Oh damn. She had said that when she’d been in the car with Dee on the way to Kyle’s house. But what really surprised her was the stabbing hot anger in her chest that Dee got to see Phoenix and she didn’t. Oh God, she was jealous! Jealous!
Her phone rang. She snatched it up and answered, “Yeah?”
“Morning …” Phoenix’s voice reached through the phone and shivered inside her chest.
“Ah, sure. Morning. Where are you?”
“At the condos.”
“Your condos?”
“Axel owns them, along with the club and the warehouse. It’s like a headquarters for us.”
“Okay …” She felt Dee watching her. Did she look like a woman who woke up alone in a man’s bed, confused? Lonely? Hurt. Not hurt, she was not hurt.
“Ailish, I had to leave this morning. Morgan’s not doing well. She and Joe are friends of mine. She’s seven months pregnant and in danger of losing the baby. Joe is beside himself.”
“Joe’s a witch hunter? Is Morgan a witch?”
“Mortal, they are both mortal, but the baby is a witch hunter boy.…”
She listened as he caught her up. “The earth witches can’t help?” A longing to be one of those witches made her chakras ache, but she felt the weight of the handfast binding on her wrist.
She would never be the one to save a woman’s baby.
“They’ve been with her since early this morning. Anyway, they’re here with me now. I’m going to put you on speaker.”
Her nerves stretched tight. She felt Dee moving around her, picking up her plate and taking it to the sink, then returning to refill her coffee. “Stop that,” she snapped. “I don’t need you babying me.”
“Tough.” Dee walked back into the coffeemaker.
She reached out and touched the fresh hot cup of coffee. It felt oddly comforting.
“Ailish, can you hear me?” Phoenix asked.
“Yes.”
“Axel and Darcy are here. Axel is the leader of the Wing Slayer Hunters, and Darcy is his mate. Also here are Sutton and his mate, Carla.”
She shifted on her seat, holding the phone tightly. “Hello. Darcy and Carla, thank you for helping me heal from the knife wounds.” She would never forget what their healing magic felt like.
“This is Darcy, and you’re welcome.” Her voice was slightly smoky.
“I’m Carla,” said a soft, clear voice. “Both Darcy and I have talked to the Ancestors, and they’ve told us that the handfast binding is always issued for a term with a price to break it.”
Ailish fought a wave of shame. While these witches didn’t sound judgmental or disgusted, how could they not be? The few witches she’d found turned from her as if she were dog shit. “Okay.”
“If you could walk us through the handfast ceremony,” Carla went on, “how it happened and what was said, we should be able to find the price.”
She had the urge to defend herself, to say, I was only sixteen! I thought I was in love! And that my mom was helping.… But what good would that do? None. It was done. Instead, she said, “The ceremony was held at the Infernal Grounds.”
“Where is that?” asked a male voice. Had to be Axel or Sutton.
“It’s like a coven church where they do all their ceremonies and magic. I’ve only seen it once.” She shifted uneasily beneath the memories. “There’s an old chapel on the grounds that was the site of a mass murder. So many murders created ley lines.” Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Do earth witches use ley lines? I mean, I know demon witches use them to summon Asmodeus from the Underworld.…” She clenched her free hand on the table.
“Yes,” Carla said gently. “Ley lines are naturally occurring power sources where two forces meet. Like where water meets the earth, so the ocean shores are rich with them. Graveyards, too, from life meeting death. For us, ley lines enhance our earth magic, but it takes high magic and a familiar to control that much power.”
She absorbed the information gratefully.
“That place, the Infernal Grounds, sounds like Screaming Chapel, where the massacre happened nearly seventy years ago,” Phoenix said. “All kids know about that place. Rumor was that the empty church is haunted by those women. Kids say they hear screams if they get close.”
“That’s the place,” Ailish said. She’d heard the story, too, how the town’s new preacher had called a meeting, at which he’d separated the men and women. He had the men meeting outside and the women in the chapel. When he went to talk with the women, he locked the doors and began screaming about witchcraft plaguing the town. He pulled out two guns and started shooting. He killed seventeen women before the men broke down the doors and killed him.
“They did hear screams. That’s the wards. They capture the screams of the murdered souls, and it’s protected by hellhounds, too. So is my mother’s house.” She didn’t want to think about the hellhounds. “What else do you want to know?”
Carla said, “Can you show us the ceremony? Project your memory onto the screen of the phone?”
She hesitated, not wanting to show these witches exactly how stupid she’d been. How she’d nearly traded away her soul and chakras for …
A hand settled on her shoulder.
Dee touching her. She couldn’t get used to the way the woman invaded her space. And yet that touch made her feel stronger. “I’ll do it.”
Opening her chakras, Ailish summoned the memory and then projected it to the phone, just as she’d done when she’d projected it to Kyle’s TV. She showed them the Infernal Grounds, standing at the altar together with Kyle, facing
her mother with the coven witches behind them. She drank from the Goblet of Choice, then it vanished and …
The wine was sweet and tangy, and she began to feel strange, sluggish when she spoke the required words: “I have chosen.”
“So be it,” the coven said as one.
Maeve, wearing a fitted black robe, held out her hands, and the cord snaked from the altar to stretch out across her upturned palms. “Ailish, do you reject all others before now to accept this binding and all it entails?”
Her chakras cramped as they always did when she was near dark magic. But she was doing this for her and Kyle! It was okay, she thought, feeling a little dizzy. She fought the light-headedness to stand straight and proud in her little black robe. This was an important ceremony that would reveal how she loved Kyle with her whole heart. She turned to look at him, seeing the boy she loved through a kind of haze.
“Say the words, Ailish, so that I can make you mine.”
Kyle’s voice almost seemed to have an echo or vibration, as though he were as excited as she was. She sighed with a swell of love for him, discounting the warning cringe of her magic. Her powers probably didn’t like the wine or the odd, thick feeling in her head. She lifted her left wrist toward her mother and said, “I accept.”
“So be it,” the coven chorused.
The cord snapped out and curled around her wrist. It felt heavy and binding. But she was binding her heart and soul to Kyle, so that made sense.
Maeve Donovan turned and said, “Kyle, do you find Ailish Donovan, daughter of the high witch of the Deus’Donovan coven, worthy?”
“Yes.”
“So be it,” the witches chanted.
The cord looped around Kyle’s left wrist. Then her mother lifted a jewel-handled knife.
Ailish was supposed to do something now. What? Oh! She raised her right hand, watching as it moved slowly, and held it out.
Maeve sliced the flesh part of Ailish’s palm.
She watched the blood well up in a straight line, noticing that it burned in a kind of disconnected way.
“Lay your hand over the cord on Kyle’s wrist and recite the words,” her mom said.
She did as she was told, trying to remember the words that came next. “My soul is offered in blood and sealed in the Claiming Rite.” She stared as her blood glistened on the cord and the skin of his arm and then vanished completely. A strange, profound sadness weighed down on her.
Maeve lifted the knife, the moonlight flashing off the black blade. “Fed by the blood of a willing witch, the binding is made for a term of eight years.” She sliced her finger and said, “The blood pact is absolute, broken only by death. As this witch goes, so do the Deus’Donovan coven.” She touched her blood to the rope binding between them.
“So be it.”
Thunder rumbled beneath the ground, and smoke exploded from the candles and incense pots.
The rope spawned to life, shifting, moving … coiling round and round Ailish’s wrist. She gasped as each loop cut deep inside her until she felt a horrible wrenching, as if she were being shredded from her pelvis to her heart.
Clutching her stomach and bending over, she cried, “It hurts!” Her chakras! It felt as though they were dying! “Oh no!” Ailish screamed, stumbling toward her mother and falling to her knees. What had she done?
Maeve didn’t even look at her, she simply stared at the others in the coven. “Prepare her.”
Ailish lifted her head, panting in fear and pain, then said, “Sulfur. Oh God!”
Kyle leaned down, grabbed her shoulders, and yanked her to her feet. “Shut up.” He shoved her back toward the altar.
The dawning horror was worse than her pain. Her mother had betrayed her! She was giving her own daughter to a demon in Kyle’s body! Looking at her mother, she demanded, “Why?”
Without a change of expression, Maeve said, “You were bargained from the day of your birth when we discovered you had the voice power. He has given me tremendous power in exchange for you. I am the high witch, and you will submit.”
“So be it,” the coven said as they surrounded her.
The panic that exploded within her tore something free in her mind. Words she hadn’t known sprang up from her very soul:
Breath of life
In my cry
From the flames
Wings shall rise
“Stop her!” Maeve screamed.
It hurt her to open her chakras and feed her powers through her voice. The flow of words coming from her brain stopped. But never had anything been so clear to Ailish as the fact that she wanted desperately to save her chakras. She sang out her vital need, pouring all she had into her voice:
“Hold the darkness where it stands! Cage or banish all that threatens the magic born of earth!”
The ground burst up, the flames of the candles exploded into massive fires, hurricane winds blew, and torrential rains pounded. Then a horrible stench erupted, and Kyle crumpled to the ground.
Ailish turned and ran, the dark fear and heartsick betrayal fueling her flight.
Breaking the memory video, Ailish said, “That was the first time I sang that song, ‘Breath of Life’ … I never knew where that came from.”
“It’s your Siren’s Song,” Carla said. “The legend says only the siren and the phoenix know it. It’s somehow imprinted on both of you.”
“But my mother realized what I was doing.” She sat there with the memories heavy on her heart. “And stopped me.” Because her mother had wanted Ailish only for more power.
Phoenix watched Ailish’s memory on the big screen in Axel’s condo office. She looked so young, her hair hanging down over her shoulders, her lean figure not yet carved from the baby softness. The little black satin robe alone sickened and enraged him.
Her mother had given her daughter to a demon. Offered her daughter’s innocent young body, had been going to let the demon kill her chakras and take her soul.
Oh yeah, he was going to kill her mother. He’d never looked forward to murder as much as he did right now.
He stayed silent as the whole scene played out, but he paced the room, hating that he couldn’t be with her now. Touch her, somehow make the pain of this old memory bearable for her.
The phoenix on his arms was burning and pecking the shit out of him, trying to get free to save his siren. Just the partial song she’d showed them had caused a visceral reaction in him.
When the image memories finally ended, he whirled around. Axel and Darcy sat behind the massive desk, while Carla and Sutton sat in chairs moved to the side. “How do we break the handfast?” He had to free her from the demon.
Then make her his.
The urgency rode through him, pounding, pulsing, eating him from the inside out. Carla stood up, her long hair pulled back in a braid, her gaze troubled. “There are two things. First, Ailish, you denounced the Ancestors when you rejected all others before the binding.”
“She didn’t know!” Phoenix yelled. “She was sixteen! A baby!”
Carla put her hand on his arm. “Yes, I saw that. I understand that this was a horrible trick played on a young woman in love. But she has some responsibility here, too.”
“She didn’t know!” Didn’t they see that?
“She’s right.” Ailish’s flat voice broke through his building ire. “I knew what my mother was, and I begged her to help.” Her voice dropped, as though she were ashamed. “I wanted him to love me, and I knew my mother was a very powerful demon witch. And at the ceremony, I felt the protest in my chakras, but I ignored it. Still, I didn’t think … I didn’t realize she was handfasting me to Asmodeus. That never even occurred to me.”
Phoenix’s chest seized with the agony in her voice. She made a mistake! And she was being punished harshly.
Carla took her hand from Phoenix and said, “Ailish, we’re not judging you, we’re trying to help.”
“Thank you. What’s the second thing?” Ailish asked, her voice tight.
Phoenix
hated having to do this over a phone. But he couldn’t be near her without touching her. This morning, once he’d let go of her, the bloodlust had seared him, damn near cooking him from the acid in his veins. When he’d taken her things back in the room and caught her warm scent with that edge of coconut power, he’d been frozen with dual urges. He wanted to strip down to his skin, get into that bed, wake her, and, while she was drowsy, slide deep into her body and seal her to him forever.
The other urge made him picture her blood all over his bed and his skin. Soaking in it, feeling the luscious power seeping into his pores … He’d gotten the hell out of there.
Carla’s voice caught his attention. “The words The blood pact is absolute, broken only by death. As this witch goes, so do the Deus’Donovan coven. That’s where the coven sealed their fate to yours.”
Darcy said, “Damn Asmodeus and his sneaky contracts. He structured the contract so the only way to break the pact is by your death. He literally condemned you to death if you don’t become a demon witch by the time the term of eight years is up.”
“Yes,” Ailish said, “and he made his coven agree in the contract to die with me if I don’t become a demon witch, so they are desperate to force me into it as well. Of course, I thought I was handfasting to Kyle. My mother said it was done that way all the time, and I believed her.”
Then her mother had betrayed her. Phoenix couldn’t help but compare their mothers, and his mother came off like Betty fucking Crocker. That thought almost made him smile. She’d have laughed at that. Even when they’d had a place to live, she couldn’t cook. Never could. But he needed to stay on point. Looking at Carla, he said, “How do we break the handfast without killing Ailish?”
She stood in the middle of the room, her gaze fixed on the blank big screen. “We have to outsmart the demon. This contract with the death clause, it’s tight, but I think there’s a loophole.”
Night Magic: A Wing Slayer Novel Page 17
